88 THE PRINCIPLES OF
wife would look down upon him, caused much hilarity among
Soviet teachers. They call that bourgeois psychology. I have
been present at many committees and staff meetings and can
testify to the extraordinary comradeship and readiness to help
that exists between men and women teachers, apparently
because they are all working for the same cause. A married
woman teacher has six weeks1 leave before pregnancy and six
weeks after pregnancy with full pay. The crfeche and the nursery-
infant school, which are at her disposal, enable her to pursue
her profession without detriment to her biological functions.
Marriage is not considered a crime for which the professional
woman must be punished by loss of her post.
The equality that applies to the sexes applies equally to the
more than 160 nationalities that inhabit the U.S.S.R. The Soviets
do not consider any races to be subject races, therefore there is
no discrimination in education. When grants are made by the
central authority, considerably larger sums are allotted propor-
tionately to the backward regions. Education must be given
in the native language, and gradually, as economic and cultural
conditions permit, schools and even higher educational
institutions are being organised in the most distant and
backward areas.
There were almost insuperable difficulties to overcome. Many
of the nationalities had no written alphabet, so that ethno-
graphic expeditions had to be sent to these districts to create
alphabets. When, after considerable time, this was achieved,
sets of textbooks had to be written, with due regard for local
conditions and stages of development. Up to date seventy-four
new alphabets have been created. A great deal of study and
investigation into local conditions were required before the
curriculum could be fixed and the syllabuses drawn up. Both
were made very elastic to allow for any necessary changes. The
school day was made an hour longer and five years was the
period given to reach the stage of the primary school. After
some years of education it was found that the so-called back-
ward peoples when given the right environment were able to